Olympic figure-skating judges are synonymous with controversy, and they sparked a fresh dust-up Thursday by bestowing this year's gold medal on an unheralded newcomer, Russia's Adelina Sotnikova, instead of the defending champion, Yuna Kim of South Korea.

Kim's defenders have rallied in outrage: By Friday, 1.7 million people had signed a Change.org petition to demand an International Skating Union investigation into the scoring.

But what the angry millions may not realize is that the scoring system is far from opaque. A look at the process reveals that while there are loopholes, the system rewards skaters who know how to game it. And Sotnikova did.

The current scoring system, introduced at the 2006 Turin Games, was created in response to the 2002 Olympic scandal in which the French and Russian judges colluded. The new system is more complicated than the old one, but it is designed to increase clarity and to avoid backroom deals.

Each segment of a competition (short program and free skate) is judged in a two-step process. A technical specialist and an assistant technical specialist identify elements that skaters perform or had intended to. They are overseen by a technical controller, and each element they call has a specific point value that is added up.

After the elements are identified (or noted as incomplete), a panel of nine judges give "grade of execution" marks for each element. They vary from -3—for a big mistake—to 3. Those GOEs are averaged together after the high and low scores are removed. After the GOEs are averaged, they are added to the base value of the elements.

The judges also rate skaters in five areas called program components, which include choreography, interpretation and skating skills. While there is room for the judges to boost these scores, the top skaters are all more or less within striking distance of each other.

The nine judges are selected before each competition segment in a draw. While the scores are made available, the name of the individual judge that gave each score is kept secret, a move made with the intent to prevent judges from helping each other. But this secrecy riles some skaters and experts.

"The sport needs to be held more accountable if they want people to believe in it," said American skater Ashley Wagner, who finished seventh.

On the panel for the Olympic ladies free skate were two individuals who have caused skepticism. Yuri Balkov, a Ukrainian judge, was suspended for a year after trying to fix the 1998 Olympic ice-dance competition. Then there is Alla Shekhovtseva, a Russian who is married to the head of the Russian figure skating federation, Valentin Pissev.

The coaches of the Russian team were asked about the connections on Friday. "She had been a figure-skating judge for years before marrying Pissev," said Elena Buyanova, Sotnikova's coach. The ISU said in a statement that it hasn't received any official protest regarding the event and "is confident in the high quality and integrity of the ISU judging system."

Unless the ISU opens the vault to show who gave what scores, no one will know for sure if there was a pro-Russian bias. Regardless, it is the technical specialists, who are appointed by the ISU, who can also inflate a score based on the way they identify and classify an element.

If they see, for example, that a skater took off from the wrong edge of the blade but say it was the correct one, the skater gets the full point value. Spotting bias at this stage of the process takes an expert's eye, and probably slow-motion video. But some insiders suspect this type of adjustment may have had an influence on the 2014 gold.

But still, the big points are in the big jumps. On that score, Sotnikova had seven triple jumps; Kim had six. Also, if you look only at point values, the two programs line up almost exactly the same in jumps, except that Sotnikova executed two jump combinations that were of higher value than the jumps Kim did at the same point in her program. (The similarities are an unintended outcome of the new scoring system: Programs look the same because everyone does the same high-value jumps to rack up points.)

The Sochi medal debate and gossip will continue for years. But so will the fact that skating is a sport based on judging. "The judging system has always been political," said Brian Boitano, the 1988 Olympic gold medalist. "You can't get away from the subjective nature of judging."

There is an picture that three of the judges hugging Sotnikova right after announcing Yuna's score to congratulate for gold medal. How is it possible that judges ran into the athlete hugging each other to share their joy? How is it possibly to tell that this result is not cooked? See the pictures below. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2565635/Pictured-Moment-17-year-old-Russian-figure-skater-got-HUG-home-judge-surprise-win-sparked-conspiracy-claims.htmlThis picture is not all. There are also pictures that two more judges ran into Sotnikova after the gold medal is decided. I have never seen something like this before. Also one triple jump is not all that explains the difference. When you see the completeness of the jump there was wrong edge and under-rotated jumps for the Sotnikova's jump whereas no flaw in the Yuna's jump but Sotnikova got more GOE for that? That is non-sense. And what about the PCS score? Sotnikova's PCS score were around 60's just a few months before and it suddenly jumped up more than 20 points adding SP and FS? And how can anyone say that the artistry of Sotnikova's performance is as goos as Yuna's? The difference in the PCS were 0.09 which is essentially tie for two. There is no doubt that the gold medal is cooked. I know Sotnikova is a good skater but not even close to Yuna and will be remembered as a most controversial champion in history. Shame on Russia that ruins the life of young Sotnikova. She is also a victim.

Adelina did one more jump which should not result in 10 points difference (it should be only 3 pt, maximum) not to mention she stumbled on her landing. Yuna had a clean program yet one judge gave a zero on her perfectly executed jump; another judge for her long program gave 1 points for 9 jumps. Does she deserve only 1 out of 3 for her performance? I don't think so.

How can the International Olympic Committee (OMC) and International Skating Union (ISU) sit silently while allowing a figure skating judge previously found guilty of cheating sit as an official for this event? This is a wrongful act for which they must sit in shame and disgrace in front of the entire world. They have once again belittled figure skating to a level that once belonged only to boxing.

Unfortunately for Ms. Sotnikova she will only be remembered as the Russian lady who stole the gold medal from Yuna Kim through a collaboration of officials some of whom had previously been involved in similar irregular activities.

Once an official is found guilty of “cheating” he/she should be terminated for life. No exceptions should be made.

When an athlete is found to have violated the rules he/she is suspended and all related awards are taken from them (e.g., Lance Armstrong). How can the ISU and OMC be so negligent in performing the functions they are chartered to perform? The sport has lost all credibility.

Placing the name of an official next to their score would be a first step of redemption. However, they need to make management changes or you will loose all of their followers. These changes should not be made with the intent of enabling those in positions of authority to remain there. They must make changes at the top level.

Possibly they should consider offering Michelle Kwan the chief administrative position at the ISU. She has served faithfully in the US State Department under Presidents Bush and Obama. I believe she would go out of her way in an attempt to save the sport she so loved.

Yes it's a subjective judgement much like professional boxing with it's often bizarre decisions. But, a skater who steps out of a jump and still scores 8 points higher than any skater has ever scored in history - well, that's just plain baloney !

"The nine judges are selected before each competition segment in a draw. While the scores are made available, the name of the individual judge that gave each score is kept secret, a move made with the intent to prevent judges from helping each other. But this secrecy riles some skaters and experts."

The new scoring system meant to anonymize the scores with the idea that a judge not under political pressure to score his country higher would score more "fairly" as an anonymous source.

Well, that does NOTHING to address the bigger problem - inherent bias. Now judges are free from scrutiny thanks to anonymity and they can vote as high as they want with NO worries that their scoring will be traced back to them.

At least with the previous scoring system, a judge's enthusiasm for his home country would be tempered by embarrassment and scrutiny if he always gave 10s. Now with this new anonymous system, a judge could vote 10s for his team every time and no one would be the wiser. The fact that the officials' table was stacked with Russian judges does not help the scoring situation, either.

The scoring system needs another revamp - this time with some critical thinking put in. I saw the match and it was clear that Kim was the winner.

Stacked? Judges are chosen by "draw." And one was Russian. One was Ukrainian. Out of nine. Kim skated exquisitely. But she did not do a program with the same level difficulty, and everyone knew going in how points are awarded. More difficulty=more points.

In the old days, people just skated around. Now, skaters must execute jumps and combinations. That's just the way it is. The Russian made a very intelligent decision to win by racking up points on difficult moves. Your preference for a different style of skating is just that, and would go back to the subjective "judging" (that gave way to the technical scoring we have now).

The more important factor is how you accomplish your performance but Sotnikova made one mistake in tirple combination jumps and one wrong edge at the first triple jump and one under-rotated jump which means she should have got deductions for where she got plus GOE instead. Also technical part is just one and PCS which is the score for the artistry was almost same for Sotnikova and Yuna. Sotnikova's performance was juniorish and not as artistic as Yuna's performance and past points for PCS shows that. But she got a boost in PCS score this time. By the way Mao's program was more difficult than Sotnikova and she cleaned her program with 7 less points than Sotnikova. If you want to say that difficulty is all that matters than Mao should have got more score than Sotnikova. Where does that 7 points difference come from? And for the short program, Yuna's difficulty had the more difficulty than Sotnikova but there was only 0.2 point difference. This is obvious that Sotnikova got boosted by Russian judge. And the technical controller was also Russian, and there Yuna got level 3 in her step sequence where she always gets level 4 and Sotnikova got level 4 this time where she used to get level 3 in the previous games. That alone has 3-4 points difference. And it's obvious that Yuna should have got 4-5 points in PCS (Artistic score), which is reversal of the result. This result is just wrong...

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